Thanks For Trying
by CamsthiSky
Summary: "Okay so going down to see the turtles when she felt absolutely awful was probably not one of April's best ideas." In which April is sick and the turtles (kind of) take care of her.


**This was prompted by Crystal Star Night. Thanks for the prompt. Sorry it took a while, but this just got so _long_.**

 **Anyways, hope you enjoy!**

* * *

Okay so going down to see the turtles when she felt absolutely awful was probably not one of April's best ideas. For one, it was _freezing._ She could literally see her breath. For another, traversing through sewage in the middle of winter probably wasn't doing any favors for her immune system.

But she was supposed to hang with the turtles and Casey tonight. They'd planned a movie marathon and she knew that all five of the boys had been bouncing off the walls in excitement about this. She couldn't just leave them hanging. After all, they hadn't done this kind of thing since they'd holed up at the farmhouse, and even April was sort of missing just hanging out with her boys.

Crazy what you could miss from an alien invasion.

When she jumped over the turnstiles, only Raphael was there, and he didn't exactly greet her, either, too busy with his pinball game to even give her a simple "hi," even though she knew he'd heard her.

Which—okay, she really hadn't been expecting much. Raph wasn't the friendliest at the best of times, and from his disgruntled expression, now probably wasn't the best time to bother him.

April wasn't feeling well, though, and with a distinct lack of Raph's brothers, it didn't look like there was going to be a movie night after all. It was better find out before she had to go traversing through the sewers again, and that meant talking to Mr. Angry over there.

"Hey, Raph? Where is everyone else? Didn't Casey say he was coming early so you guys could talk about patrol for this week?" she asked, her voice raspy.

"Casey ain't coming," Raph told her. He gave her a look, stopping his game to turn towards her. "He called and said he had to babysit his little sister. But maybe he should babysit _you_ instead. Geez, April. Ever heard of staying in bed when you're sick?"

"Oh shut it, Raph," she growled. "We were going to have a movie night, and I didn't want to miss it."

"Right. Whatever. Just don't blame me when Donnie starts freaking out on you."

April slumped into the pit, watching Raph stalk off to his room. Well, _that_ had gone well. And now she was feeling even worse. She could definitely go for some chicken noodle soup and about a hundred blankets right now.

But a nap sounded even better.

* * *

"Um."

April blinked awake. She felt about a thousand times worse than she did before, and that was saying something, 'cause she'd been feeling pretty crappy when she walked into the lair.

Donnie was staring at her from in front of his lab. If she had to guess, she'd say that he had been walking out of his lab and had caught sight of her napping on the couch. Which meant that the genius was completely caught off guard, and that never really bode well at all.

She decided to go for the casual approach. Maybe he wouldn't freak out too much as he seemed to be prone to when she dropped in unannounced.

(Though, things between the two of them seemed a lot less tense since the farmhouse-April knew that he still tended to go overboard a bit, but Donnie had also sort of mellowed out, too.)

"Hey, Donnie," she rasped, only to wince at the sound of her own voice.

"You...are you okay?"

"Yeah." April didn't like the apprehensive look Donnie was giving her, like if he moved even an inch closer she would drop dead. "I think I just caught a cold."

Donnie paled. "Are you sure it's just a cold?" For some reason his voice was getting higher, his jaw twitching as the russet brown eyes scanned her over and over again. "It's not the flu, right? Or pneumonia? Or- oh no. Oh shell. I wonder if it's a bacterial infection or a viral infection. I can probably whip up some antibiotics once I look up how to-"

"Donnie!" April yelled as much as she could. The genius of a turtle snapped his mouth shut and stared at her, eyes still wide, jaw still very much twitching. She put her hands up in a placating gesture, a small smile pulling at her lips. "It's seriously not that bad. It's just a cold."

"I'll get you some blankets," he said once she finished talking, sweeping out of the room and back in with a stack of fluffy blankets before she had time to even blink. He piled them on top of her and she let him fuss over her, even though she was sweltering underneath the four blankets he had given her.

"Thanks, Donnie," she said. His bright, nervous smile was worth the discomfort.

* * *

She must have fallen asleep again, because when she opened her eyes next, the TV was on low and it was practically splitting her head in two. She groaned and dug her hand out of the pile of blankets to push against her aching head. There was some shuffling, and when April squinted her eyes back open (when had she closed them?), Mikey was pressing the power button on the TV to turn it off.

"April?" he asked, his voice sort of soft. He was sheepish, wringing his hands from where he sat in the middle of the pit. "Sorry. I didn't mean to wake you up. Leo said I could watch TV as long as I stayed quiet."

April sighed. "It's fine, Mikey. But I've kind of got a headache, and I want to go back to sleep. So maybe no TV for now?"

Mikey nodded solemnly, right before his face split into a blinding grin. His voice was a little less soft when he spoke up again. "Oh! I know! Maybe I can tell you a bedtime story?"

April's headache was reverberating with every noise Mikey made, but she still managed a small nod, even as she retreated into the pile of blankets still on top of her. Maybe she should chance the sewers home after all?

And yet, despite the obvious discomfort Mikey's wild stories were bringing her, she couldn't make herself leave the lair behind just yet.

* * *

It was Leo who finally saved her from Mikey.

The orange-banded turtle had been chattering on and on, and April was growing wearier of it by the second. At the same time, she almost didn't want him to stop. It reminded her of the times at the farmhouse when Mikey would tell Leo about his day, even though Leo was unconscious and couldn't hear a word he said. It made Mikey feel a bit better and that had been a blessing back then.

Now, it was hard to make herself tell him to stop. So she didn't. And her headache just kept getting worse.

"Mikey," Leo called from the doorway to the kitchen. "Maybe you should give April some breathing room."

The youngest turtle pouted. "Aww, but I was just getting to the good paaaart," Mikey whined. Leo gave him the Look, and then Mikey was caving. "Fine." He turned to April. "You can hear the ending next time."

April smiled. "Sure, Mikey. Next time."

Once Mikey was gone from the room, Leo came over, carrying a bowl of...something.

That set off warning bells in her mind immediately, because as far as she knew, only Mikey and Master Splinter knew how to cook in this family. Hadn't Leo once destroyed the kitchen trying to make _toast?_

Leo sat down next to her and offered her the bowl and a spoon. "Here. I thought you could use some chicken noodle soup."

"Thanks."

She tried not to grimace when she slurped the soup from the spoon. Judging from Leo's wry smile, she wasn't all that successful.

"It's not very good, is it?"

April swallowed. "It's...it's okay," she said. "I mean, maybe it's not the _best_ , but-"

Leo was chuckling at that. "It's okay, you don't have to eat it if you don't want to, April," he said. Which was probably a good thing, because she wasn't sure if her stomach could handle too much of Leo's cooking. "I just wanted to see if I could do something to make you feel better."

"Leo, I…." she started, but trailed off, unable to finish her sentence.

"Perhaps," a new voice said, "a cup of tea will help a little better than your soup, Leonardo."

Both Leo and April looked up as Master Splinter walked into the main room, stopping just short of the pit to sit down next to them on the couch. She accepted the cup of herbal tea from her sensei the moment he held it out to her.

Once she had taken a sip, she was relaxing into the couch, her headache subsiding some and her nerves unknotting themselves until she wasn't the frazzled mess she'd walked into the lair as. It was nice.

"Thanks," she said, hoping Splinter could hear the gratitude in her voice. "This is really nice. _All of you_ ," she looked to Leo, "have been super nice to me. Thanks for trying to make me feel better."

Leo smile widened. "Well, I'm not sure how much any of us actually _helped_ , but we tried our best."

"Maybe next time, April," Splinter said, a glint in his eyes that she couldn't quite place, "you might want to think about staying home and calling us when you feel ill."

"And miss movie night?" April asked. "Not for the world."

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 **If anybody has any other prompts let me know either in a review, a pm, or on my tumblr (check my profile). Thanks. Please let me know what you thought!**


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